I fighting with the WOL settings of my Ubuntu box at the moment. The idea is to have an HTTP/SVN server to sleep while it's unused and wake up when it's accessed. So far, wake-on-LAN works and is activated on startup:

As you can see, I also set the wol p flag ('wake on physical activity'). My assumption was that I could convince the device to wake up not only on magic packets, but on any network access. This, however, seems to be wrong.

What does this flag mean then, and: (How) can I misuse this for my evil plans?

1 Answer
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WOL typically requires a "magic packet" to actually "wake-up" a WOL system when it is "sleeping" or in an "off" state. The "magic packet" is a specific "message" instead of just any casual network activity.

Some NICs have advanced power management features where it can "wake" a system based on network activity, but like WOL not all models necessarily have this capability.